163

I guess this is going to be everything on the internet now (hexbear.net)

submitted 7 months ago by HarryLime@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

89 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] JohnBrownNote@hexbear.net 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

???

how is it an enclosure? the "original" works are all exactly where they were when they were scraped. (and the "original" of a digital thing is a real fucken weird concept too, the first time that image existed was in the computer's RAM, or maybe the pixels in a particular state on the artist's monitor, the one that you see on the internet is like 5 generations of copy already)

like fuck these companies and the peter theil types behind them to death but superman 4-ing fractions of pennies from the take a penny tray isn't theft just because you do it a billion times, and copying isn't theft at all.

[-] FanonFan@hexbear.net 7 points 7 months ago

I think we're talking past each other. Your argument applies if we're talking about a liberal concept of ownership, or maybe judging the morality of ai, but that's unrelated to a material analysis of it. Generative technology requires massive datasets, which are the result of millions of hours of labor. This isn't a moral claim at all, it's simply trying to describe the mechanism at play.

Enclosure in the digital space isn't an exact parallel to enclosure acts in medieval England. I usually see it applied to the Open Source ecosystem: the products of volunteer labor are enclosed or harvested or adopted by private corporations. Google and Microsoft and Apple all built empires on this mechanism.

I mentioned a "mature" stage because I think the next step is more forceful enclosure and hoarding of datasets. The usability of the internet is quickly decreasing in lockstep with the development of AI, a dialectical evolution. It's eating away at the foundation upon which it builds itself.